Hackers disrupt someone’s life every minute of every day. In fact, more than 140 million people associated with the Equifax breach were hacked this summer. There are several basic things you can do to stay ahead of the bad guys and know what to look out for if your personally identifiable information has been compromised.

Online Security Tips for Consumers:

Routinely monitor all of your financial accounts for suspicious activities, such as transactions you did not make. If your institution offers account activity alerts via text or email, sign up for them.

Cyber criminals can now use data from a breach to access your other online accounts via password reset questions. These questions usually ask you personal information such as your mother’s maiden name and previous addresses. If you have ever used any of this information in those types of security questions, you should change the questions immediately.

If the information that was leaked in the breach was as a Social Security number or other personally identifiable information, you may want to consider putting a security freeze on your credit report. This will prevent other institutions from accessing your report entirely. It will also stop hackers from opening any new credit lines or credit extensions under your name. Also be sure to contact the Social Security Administration if dealing with a data breach that involves your SSN about next steps.

If you do encounter suspicious activity on your account, contact your bank immediately. Inform them of the activity as well as the fact that your information was exposed in a breach. Secondly, contact the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) and file a report.

If a password was involved in the breach – change it. These passwords should be difficult to hack and should be different for every account and changed at least every six months.

Check Websites for PCI Compliance

When shopping online, look for sites that are PCI compliant. These websites are meeting the standards set by the Payment Card Industry (PCI) and are scanned for vulnerabilities accessible to hackers. Trust Guard scans for more than 75,575 vulnerabilities for thousands of websites all over the world. Look for the Trust Guard trust seal on websites. If you see one, you’ll know that it is safe from hackers.

Breaches are common these days because the payoff for cyber criminals may be lucrative. For this reason, it’s important that you stay as proactive as possible.

]]>http://blog.trust-guard.com/equifax-breach-protect/feed/0Hackers Accessed 143 Million Equifax Accountshttp://blog.trust-guard.com/hackers-accessed-equifax-accounts/
http://blog.trust-guard.com/hackers-accessed-equifax-accounts/#respondMon, 11 Sep 2017 22:33:28 +0000http://blog.trust-guard.com/?p=2845The big news this week regarding cyber security is the massive breach to the private information of 143 million people connected with Equifax. The people affected by the data breach live in the United States, Canada and the UK. Their names, social security numbers, birth dates, and addresses were compromised sometime between May and July of this year. Furthermore, 209,000 clients had their credit card information stolen. Chances are that hackers took private information from you or someone you know.

Equifax Inc. is a consumer credit reporting agency headquartered in the United States. It is considered one of the three largest American credit agencies along with Experian and TransUnion. The online security breach damages the reputation of Equifax. There will be lawsuits to deal with as well.

Legal Claims Against Equifax

According to an article in the NY Daily News, two New York women, who claim to be Equifax customers, have already started the legal process to receive compensation. Their lawyers say the women “live in constant fear,” worried that they might be victims of identity theft because of Equifax’s data breach. Linda Tirelli and Brooke Merino filed a claim against Equifax on Monday. They allege that the credit reporting agency “failed to properly safeguard the information.”

Tirelli and Merino’s lawyers claim their client’s information was compromised during the hacker’s data attack. Reportedly, eight million New York residents were impacted. The Manhattan Federal Court suit, which seeks class action status, maintains Equifax dropped the ball. It states that they didn’t protect consumers. It also alleges that they failed to give clients enough notice about the breach — violating state and federal law. Usually, data breaches are disclosed via a company’s press release, which quickly reaches offline, radio, TV, and online news outlets.

More than 30,000 websites are broken into every day because companies fail to check for security vulnerabilities on their own websites. It’s shocking to see that when sites are initially monitored for security risks from Trust Guard, more than 85% of them fail their first scan. Trust Guard, the leader in website security, scans websites and servers for more than 75,500 vulnerabilities. It contacts business owners when there are security issues so that the holes can be repaired quickly. Once the repairs are made, the website is re-scanned to ensure its safety.

With successful hacks like this one with Equifax, and previous hacks into LinkedIn, Yahoo, and Target, cyber criminals are gaining momentum. Monitor the security of your online business with PCI compliant security scanning. Visit Trust Guard’s website today to start protecting your business and your customers from hackers.